Showing posts with label CIA director John Brennan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA director John Brennan. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog: ISIS launches chemical weapons attack in Iraq injuring 600.

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New post on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

As top officials warn ISIS will attempt “direct attacks” in U.S. homeland in 2016, ISIS launches chemical weapons attack in Iraq injuring 600. Here’s the latest.

by joelcrosenberg
There is a real and growing and chilling concern among top intelligence officials that ISIS is steadily developing the ability to launch massive, genocidal attacks against its enemies using chemical weapons. Whether ISIS is planning such attacks inside the U.S., in Europe or only within the Middle East, is not yet clear.
Ghastly attacks of precisely this sort are the premise of my two most recent novels,The Third Target and The First Hostage. When I began researching and writing the series, however, there was no actual evidence that ISIS possessed -- or had access to --  weapons of mass destruction. But the situation is changing for the worse.
Also last month, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told a security conference in Munich that ISIS has chemical weapons and wants to use them against the United States. "It is pretty clear that they [ISIS] have used this [chemical weapons] numerous times," Clapper said. "It is very clear aspirationally they would like to do more and it is a concern to us in the United States because the indications are that they would like to use chemical weapons against us.”
Now, just this week, we've learned that ISIS has just launched two attacks in the city of Kirkuk using chemical weapons. At least 600 Iraqis have been injured by the attacks. One little girl is dead. Hundreds of other Iraqis have fled for their lives. Iraq's Prime Minister is vowing revenge for the attacks.
Recently, U.S. special forces captured ISIS's chemical weapons chief. "Sleiman Daoud al-Afari was snatched close to a month ago in the town of Badoosh, north-west of the Isis stronghold of Mosul," reported the UK Guardian. "A senior Iraqi official said he was an industrial engineer in former dictator Saddam Hussein’s military and had been a member of Isis throughout all its earlier incarnations." This week, U.S. forces handed over the terrorist to the Iraqi government.
U.S., Iraqi and Kurdish forces have been attacking ISIS chemical weapons production facilities. It is likely that knowledge of these facilities came from intel provided by al-Afari.
But the risk is increasingly high that ISIS is planning "enormous and spectacular attacks" in Europe, the U.S., in Israel or in a Sunni Arab country, as a top British security official recently warned.
  • The Islamic State group has launched two chemical attacks near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killing a 3-year-old girl, injuring some 600 people and causing hundreds more to flee, Iraqi officials said Saturday.
  • Security and hospital officials say the latest attack took place early Saturday in the small town of Taza, which was also struck by a barrage of rockets carrying chemicals three days earlier.
  • “There is fear and panic among the women and children,” said Adel Hussein, a local official in Taza. “They're calling for the central government to save them.” Hussein said a German and an American forensics team arrived in the area to test for the presence of chemical agents.
  • The wounded are suffering from infected burns, suffocation and dehydration, said Helmi Hamdi, a nurse at the Taza hospital. He said eight people were transferred to Baghdad for treatment.
  • U.S. and Iraqi officials said U.S. special forces captured the head of the ISIS unit trying to develop chemical weapons in a raid last month in northern Iraq.
  • The U.S.-led coalition said the chemicals ISIS has so far used include chlorine and a low-grade sulfur mustard which is not very potent....
  • The coalition began targeting ISIS' chemical weapons infrastructure with airstrikes and special operations raids two months ago, Iraqi intelligence officials and a Western security official in Baghdad told the AP.
  • Airstrikes are targeting laboratories and equipment, and further special forces raids targeting chemical weapons experts are planned, the officials said....
joelcrosenberg | March 15, 2016 at 8:49 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-4rS

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog: “The First Hostage” hits #1 on best-seller list one day after CIA director warns ISIS using chemical weapons.

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“The First Hostage” hits #1 on best-seller list one day after CIA director warns ISIS using chemical weapons.

by joelcrosenberg
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On the day after CIA Director John Brennan told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that the Islamic State is using chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq, a novel about ISIS using chemical weapons against its enemies in the Middle East has hit #1 on a national best-seller list.
I'm pleased to report that The First Hostage has just become the nation’s #1 best-selling novel in the North American Christian book market, according to the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association. It is also the #7 of all Christian best-sellers, both fiction and non-fiction, this month.
In January, The First Hostage spent four weeks on the Publishers Weekly hardcover fiction best-sellers list. It also hit the USA Today list, though it did not hit the New York Times list.
This is the second in a series of thrillers about J.B. Collins, a fictional foreign correspondent tracking the threat posed by ISIS to the U.S., Israel, Jordan, and a group of other Mideast countries. The previous novel, The Third Target, was released in January 2015.
They are both the first -- and, thus far, the only -- novels in the world about the threat of the Islamic State.
On behalf of my wife and me -- and the entire Tyndale House Publishing team -- please let me say thank you so much for your enthusiastic support of this thriller, and The Third Target before it, which hit all the general market lists when it released last year and was also a #1 best-seller in the Christian market. We deeply appreciate how so many of you are blogging and Tweeting and writing on Facebook about both novels, and writing so many positive reviews on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, and other book sites.
Since many of you keep asking, please rest assured that I am hard at work right now on the third novel in this J.B. Collins series. We expect this next one to release in January 2017 and I'll certainly keep you posted on my progress along the way.
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joelcrosenberg | February 15, 2016 at 3:11 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-4gQ